Life expectancy in West African countries: Evidence of convergence and catching up with the north

OlaOluwa S. Yaya; Oluwaseun A. Otekunrin; Ahamuefula E. Ogbonna

doi:10.21307/stattrans-2021-004

Life expectancy in West African countries: Evidence of convergence and catching up with the north

OlaOluwa S. Yaya Economic and Financial Statistics Unit, Department of Statistics, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria & Honorary Research Fellow, ILMA University, Karachi, Pakistan ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7554-3507 , Oluwaseun A. Otekunrin Statistical Design of Investigations Unit, Department of Statistics, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4193-1413 , Ahamuefula E. Ogbonna Economic and Financial Statistics Unit, Department of Statistics, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria & Centre for Econometric and Allied Research, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9127-5231 Statistics in Transition new series, vol. 22, 2021, 1, pages: 75–88 Published online: 3 March 2021 DOI 10.21307/stattrans-2021-004

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ABSTRACT

The article aims to investigate the possibility of the convergence and catching up of life expectancy values observed in West African countries with those noted in North African countries. Following the theory of time series convergence, documented in Bernard and Durlauf (1996) and Greasley and Oxley (1997), more robust unit root tests, based on the Fourier nonlinearity and instantaneous breaks proposed in Furuoka (2017), are used in investigating the convergence of each pair of a West African country and its North African counterpart. As no unit root in the differences of the pairs implies convergence, the results obtained by means of the new statistical approach quite outperform those produced by classical unit root tests. The results provide general evidence of the convergence of life expectancy values recorded in West Africa and North Africa.

KEYWORDS

Africa, convergence, Fourier function, life expectancy ratio, nonlinearity, unit root

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